A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  “I asked. He turned me down.”

  “When?”

  “The evening before the party.”

  “But you told me you hadn't . . . since last September . . .” Margaret saw him turn away from her again, his head lowered as it had lowered so many times in childhood over a legion of disappointments and defeats. She wanted to rage against them all, but particularly against whatever fate it was that made Adrian's life so difficult for him. Beyond that maternal reaction, however, Margaret felt something else that she didn't want to feel. Nor could she risk identifying it. She said, “Adrian, you told me . . .” Mentally, she went back through the chronology of events. What had he said? that Guy had died before his son had had the opportunity to ask him a second time for the money he needed to bankroll his business. Internet access, it was, the wave of the future. A wave he could ride to make his father proud to have produced such a visionary son. “You said you'd had no chance to ask him for money on this visit.”

  “I lied,” Adrian replied flatly. He lit another cigarette and he didn't look her way.

  Margaret felt her throat go dry. “Why?”

  He made no reply.

  She wanted to shake him. She needed to force an answer from him because only with an answer could she possibly discover the rest of the truth so that she would know what she was dealing with so that she could move quickly and plan for whatever might come next. But beneath that need to scheme, to excuse, to do anything it took to keep her son safe, Margaret was aware of a deeper feeling.

  If he'd lied to her about having spoken to his father, he'd lied about other things as well.

  After his conversation with Bertrand Debiere, St. James arrived back at the hotel in a pensive frame of mind. The young receptionist in the lobby handed him a message, but he didn't open it as he climbed the stairs to his room. Instead, he wondered what it meant that Guy Brouard had gone to considerable trouble and expense to obtain a set of architectural documents which apparently weren't legitimate. Had he known this or had he been the dupe of an unscrupulous businessman in America who took his money and handed over a design for a building that no one would be able to build because it wasn't an official design in the first place? And what did it mean that it wasn't an official design? Was it thus plagiarised? Could one plagiarise an architectural design?

  In the room, he went for the telephone, digging out of his pocket the information he'd gleaned earlier from Ruth Brouard and DCI Le Gallez. He found the number for Jim Ward and punched it into the phone while he organised his thoughts.

  It was morning still in California, and the architect had apparently just arrived at his office. The woman who answered the phone said, “He's just walking in . . .” and then “Mr. W., someone with a way cool accent is asking for you . . .” and then into the phone, “Where're you calling from anyway? What'd you say your name was?”

  St. James repeated it. He was phoning from St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, he explained.

  She said, “Wow. Hang on a sec, okay?” And just before she sent him into limbo, St. James heard her say, “Hey. Where's the English Channel, you guys?”

  Forty-five seconds passed, during which time St. James was entertained by lively reggae music through the ear piece of the phone. Then the music clicked off abruptly and a man's pleasant voice said, “Jim Ward. How can I help you? Is this more about Guy Brouard?”

  “You've spoken to DCI Le Gallez, then,” St. James said. He went on to explain who he was and what he was doing involved in the situation on Guernsey.

  “I don't think there's much I can do to help you,” Ward said. “As I told that detective when he called, I had only one meeting with Mr. Brouard. His project sounded interesting, but I hadn't gotten further than arranging to have those samples sent over. I was waiting to hear if he wanted something else. I'd dropped a few new pictures in the mail so he could look over several other buildings I have going up in north San Diego. But that was it.”

  “What do you mean by samples?” St. James asked. “What we have here—and I've been looking at them today—appear to be an extensive set of drawings. I've gone over them with a local architect—”

  “They are. Extensive, that is. I gathered up one project's paperwork from start to finish for him: a big spa that's going up here on the coast. I put together everything but the eight-and-a-half-by-elevens, the bound book. I told him they would give him an idea of how I work, which was what he wanted before he'd ask me to do anything more. It was a strange way of going at it, if you ask me. But it wasn't any real problem to accommodate him, and it saved me time to—”

  St. James cut in. “Are you saying that what was couriered over here wasn't the set of plans for a museum?”

  Ward laughed. “Museum? No. It's a high-end spa: head-to-foot pampering for the cosmetic-surgery crowd. When he asked me for a sample of my work—for as complete a set of plans as I could get to him—that was the easiest to lay my hands on. I told him that. I said that what I'd send wouldn't reflect what I'd do for a museum. But he said that was fine by him. Anything would do, just as long as it was complete and he'd be able to understand what he was looking at.”

  “So that's why these aren't official plans,” St. James said, more to himself than to Ward.

  “Right. Those are just copies from the office here.”

  St. James thanked the architect and rang off. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the tops of his shoes.

  He was experiencing a decidedly down-the-rabbit-hole sort of moment. It was appearing more and more that the museum had been something Brouard was using as a blind. But as a blind for what? And in any case the nagging question was: Had it been a blind from the very beginning? And if that turned out to be the case, had one of the principals involved in its development—someone, perhaps, depending upon its creation and having invested in it in any number of ways—discovered this fact and struck out in an act of revenge for having been ill-used by Brouard?

  St. James pressed his fingers to his forehead and demanded of his brain that it sort out everything. But as appeared to be the case for everyone associated with the murder victim, Guy Brouard stayed one step ahead of him. It was a maddening feeling.

  He'd placed the folded note from reception on the dressing table, and he caught a glimpse of it as he rose from the bed. It was, he saw, a message from Deborah and it appeared to have been written in a furious hurry.

  Cherokee's been arrested! she'd scrawled. Please come as soon as you get this. The word please had been underlined twice, and she had added a hastily sketched map to the Queen Margaret Apartments on Clifton Street, which St. James took himself to at once.

  His knuckles barely touched the door of Flat B before Deborah answered it. She said, “Thank God. I'm so glad you're here. Come in, my love. Meet China at last.”

  China River was sitting tailor-fashion on the sofa, round her shoulders a blanket that she held to her like a shawl. She said to St. James, “I never thought I'd actually meet you. I never thought . . .” Her face crumpled. She raised a fist to her mouth.

  “What's happened?” St. James asked Deborah.

  “We don't know,” she replied. “The police wouldn't say when they took him. China's solicitor . . . China's advocate . . . he set off to talk to them as soon as we phoned him, but we haven't yet heard back from him. But, Simon”—and here she lowered her voice—“I think they've got something . . . something they've found. What else could it be?”

  “His prints on that ring?”

  “Cherokee didn't know about the ring. He'd never seen it. He was as surprised as I when we took it to the antiques shop and were told—”

  “Deborah,” China cut in from the sofa. They turned to her. She looked markedly hesitant. And then just as remarkedly regretful. “I . . .” She seemed to reach inside herself for the resolve to continue. “Deborah, I showed that ring to Cherokee right when I bought it.”

  St. James said to his wife, “Are you sure he didn't—
”

  “Debs didn't know. I didn't say. I didn't want to because when she showed me the ring—here in the apartment—Cherokee didn't say a word. He didn't act like he even recognised it. I couldn't figure out . . . you know, why he . . .” Nervously, she bit at the cuticle of her thumbnail. “He didn't say . . . And I didn't think . . .”

  “They took his belongings as well,” Deborah said to St. James. “He had a duffel and a rucksack. They wanted them especially. There were two of them—two constables, I mean—and they said, ‘This is it? This is everything you've brought with you?' After they took him, they came back and had a look through all the cupboards. Under the furniture as well. And through the rubbish.”

  St. James nodded. He said to China, “I'll have a word with DCI Le Gallez directly.”

  China said, “Someone had it planned from the beginning. Find two dumb Americans, two who've never been out of the country, who'll probably never have enough money to even get out of California unless they hitchhike. Offer them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It'll sound so good, too good to be true, and they'll jump at the chance. And then we'll have them.” Her voice quavered. “We've been set up. First me. Now him. They're going to say we planned it together before we ever left home. And how can we prove that we didn't? That we didn't even know these people. Not one of them. How can we prove it?”

  St. James was loath to say what needed to be said to Deborah's friend. There was, indeed, a bizarre comfort for her in thinking that she and her brother were now in the quicksand together. But the truth of the matter lay in what two witnesses had seen on the morning of the murder and in what signs had been left at the crime scene. The additional truth lay in who had now been arrested and why.

  He said, “I'm afraid it's fairly clear there was only one killer, China. One person was seen following Brouard to the bay and one set of footprints was next to his body.”

  The lights were dim in the room, but he saw China swallow. “Then it didn't matter which one of us got accused. Me or him. But they definitely needed two of us here to double the chance that one of us would be fingered. It was all planned out, set up from the first. You see that, don't you?”

  St. James was silent. He did see that someone had thought everything through. He did see that the crime had not been the work of a single moment. But he also saw that, as far as he knew right now, only four people had possessed the information that two Americans—two potential fall-guys for a murder—would be traveling to Guernsey to make a delivery to Guy Brouard: Brouard himself, the lawyer he'd employed in California, and the River siblings. With Brouard dead and the lawyer accounted for, that left only the Rivers to have planned out the murder. One of the Rivers.

  He said carefully, “The difficulty is that apparently no one knew you were coming.”

  “Someone must have. Because the party was arranged . . . the museum party . . .”

  “Yes. I see that. But Brouard appears to have led a number of people to believe that the design he'd chosen was going to be Bertrand Debiere's. That tells us that your arrival—your presence at Le Reposoir—was something of a surprise to everyone but Brouard himself.”

  “He must have told someone. Everyone confides in someone else. What about Frank Ouseley? They were good friends. Or Ruth? Wouldn't he have told his own sister?”

  “It doesn't appear that way. And even if he had done, she had no reason to—”

  “Like we did?” China's voice raised. “Come on. He told someone we were coming. If not Frank or Ruth . . . Someone knew. I'm telling you. Someone knew.”

  Deborah said to St. James, “He might have told Mrs. Abbott. Anaïs. The woman he was involved with.”

  “And she could have passed the word along,” China said. “Anyone could have known from that point.”

  St. James had to admit that this was possible. He had to admit it was even likely. The problem was, of course, that Brouard's having told anyone about the eventual arrival of the Rivers begged the question of a crucial detail that still needed sorting out: the apocryphal nature of the architectural plans. Brouard had presented the elevation water colour as the genuine article, the future wartime museum, when he'd known all along that it was nothing of the sort. So if he'd told someone else that the Rivers were bringing plans from California, had he also told that person the plans were phony?

  “We do need to speak with Anaïs, my love,” Deborah urged. “Her son as well. He was . . . He was definitely in a state, Simon.”

  “You see?” China said. “There're others, and one of them knew we were coming. One of them planned things from there. And we've got to find that person, Simon. Because no way are the cops about to do it.”

  Outside, they found a soft rain had begun to fall, and Deborah took Simon's arm, tucking herself into his side. She liked to think he might interpret her gesture as one made by a woman seeking shelter in the strength of her man, but she knew it wasn't in his nature to flatter himself in that way. He would know it was what she did to assure herself that he didn't slip on a cobblestone made slick by water and, depending upon his mood, he would humour her or not.

  Humouring her for whatever reason appeared to be his choice. He ignored her motives and said, “The fact that he said nothing to you about the ring . . . Not even that his sister had bought it or had mentioned buying it or had mentioned seeing it or anything of that nature . . . It doesn't look good, my love.”

  “I don't want to consider what it means,” she admitted. “Especially if her fingerprints are clearly all over it.”

  “Hmm. I did think you were heading in that direction towards the end. Despite the remark about Mrs. Abbott. You looked . . .” Deborah felt him glance at her. “You looked . . . stricken, I suppose.”

  “He's her brother,” Deborah said. “I just can't stand to think her own brother . . .” She wished to dismiss the very idea, but she couldn't. There it resided, as it had done from the moment her husband had pointed out that no one had known the River siblings were coming to Guernsey. From that instant, all she'd been able to think of was the countless times throughout the years when she'd heard of Cherokee River's exploits just this side of the law. He'd been the original Man with a Plan, and the Plan had always involved the easy acquisition of cash. That had been the case when Deborah had lived with China in Santa Barbara and listened to tales of Cherokee's exploits: from the rent-a-bed operation of his teens in which he allowed his room to be used on an hourly basis for adolescent assignations, to the thriving cannabis farm of his early twenties. Cherokee River as Deborah knew him had been an opportunist from the first. The only question was how one defined the opportunity he may have seen and jumped upon in Guy Brouard's death.

  “What I can't stand to think of is what it means about China,” Deborah said. “About what he intended to happen to her . . . I mean, that she should be the one . . . Of all people . . . It's horrible, Simon. Her own brother. How could he ever . . . ? I mean, if he's done this in the first place. Because, really, there has to be another explanation. I don't want to believe this one.”

  “We can look for another,” Simon said. “We can talk to the Abbotts. To everyone else as well. But, Deborah . . .”

  She looked up to see the concern on his face. “You do need to prepare yourself for the worst,” he said.

  “The worst would be China standing trial,” Deborah responded. “The worst would have been China's going to prison. Taking the fall for . . . taking the fall for . . . for someone . . .” Her words died out as she realised how right her husband was. Without warning, with no time to adjust, she felt as if she were caught between two alternatives named bad and worse. Her first loyalty was to her old friend. So she knew she should have been experiencing a fair degree of joy from the fact that a false arrest and a faulty prosecution that could have resulted in China's imprisonment appeared—at this eleventh hour—to have been obviated altogether. But if the cost of China's rescue came at the expense of knowing that her own brother had orchestrated the events that had led to
her arrest . . . How could anyone celebrate China's deliverance after being presented with that sort of information? And how could China herself ever recover from such a betrayal? “She's not going to believe he's done this to her,” Deborah finally said.

  Simon asked quietly, “What about you?”

  “Me?” Deborah stopped walking. They had reached the corner of Berthelot Street, which sloped steeply down to the High Street and the quay beyond it. The narrow lane was slick, and the rain snaking towards the bay was beginning to form serious rivulets that promised to grow in the coming hours. It was no wise spot for a man uncertain of his footing to walk, yet Simon turned towards it resolutely while Deborah thought about his question.

  She saw that midway down the slope, the windows of the Admiral de Saumarez Inn winked brightly in the gloom, suggesting both shelter and comfort. But she knew these were specious offerings even at the best of times, no more permanent than the rain that fell on the town. Nonetheless, her husband headed towards them. She didn't answer his question till they were safely within the shelter of the inn's front door.

  Then she said to him, “I hadn't considered it, Simon. I'm not exactly sure what you mean, anyway.”

  “Just what I said. Can you believe?” he asked her. “Will you be able to believe? When it comes down to it—if it comes down to it—are you willing to believe Cherokee River has framed his own sister? Because that will likely mean he came to London expressly to fetch you. Or me. Or both of us, for that matter. But he didn't come only to go to the embassy.”

  “Why?”

  “Did he fetch us, you mean? To have his sister believe he was helping her. To make sure she didn't dwell on anything that could have caused her to look on him with suspicion or, worse, turn the spotlight on him in the eyes of the police. I'd suggest that he was applying salve to his conscience as well by at least having someone here for China, but if he intended her to take the fall for a murder, I don't actually believe he has a conscience in the first place.”